In the original narrative, Pilate wanted to save the Son of Father ("Bar-Abbas")

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Post Reply
Giuseppe
Posts: 13658
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

In the original narrative, Pilate wanted to save the Son of Father ("Bar-Abbas")

Post by Giuseppe »

In previous threads, I had followed the implications of the absence of Pilate in the original gospel. Prof Robert Price is very near to the truth when he writes:

It is common to suggest that the blame for Jesus' death has been passed from the
Romans, whom Christians thought it best not to offend, to the Jews. But scholars are finding
it increasingly difficult to produce a plausible reason that either Jewish or Roman authorities
should have wanted Jesus dead. Perhaps that is because neither of them did. The Romans may
as easily have been the secondary scapegoat used by early Christians to shift the blame from
themselves. And that should come as no surprise, the scapegoat game being what it is. Girard
remarks that "there is reason to believe that the wars described as 'foreign wars' in the mythic
narratives were in fact formerly civil strifes. There are many tales that tell of two warring
cities or nations, in principle independent of one another—Thebes and Argos, Rome and
Alba, Hellas and Troy—whose conflicts bring to the surface so many elements pertaining
directly to the sacrificial crisis and to its violent resolution that it is hard not to view these
stories as mythic elaborations of this same crisis, presented in terms of a 'fictive' foreign
threat."76 I suspect that the presence of Roman authority in the Passion is a mythic cover-up
of precisely this kind
.

(Deconstructing Jesus, my bold, cursive original)

The implication is that Pilate was introduced by Judaizers against the Gentilizers (hence, as outcome of a real inner strife among Christians), to dirty them, also, of the responsability of the Death of Jesus.

Unfortunately, prof Price in that book seems to be totally unaware of the great article of Couchoud and Stahl about the true meaning of Barabbas. Despite of this regrettable ignorance, prof Price does a just remark:

The element that Jesus had been "delivered up out of envy" (Mark 15:10) also has Girardian resonances of mimetic desire. Suppose we try one of Girard's reversals and posit that in the earlier version the choice being made here was not which will live, but rather which will die.

Hence the crowd is angry against Pilate because the crowd wants to choose who to kill, not who to save.

If we add this just Price's remark to the thesis (already proved beyond any reasonable doubt by Couchoud) about Barabbas as a Judaizing parody of the Marcion's Christ, then we arrive very much near to the same conclusion of Jean Magne:

Y-a-t-il ironie dans le fait que les Juifs rejettent Jésus prétendu messie et réclament Jésus Barabbas, c'est-à-dire Jésus Fils du Père, que le sanhédrin a condamné comme blasphémateur? Le récit ne serait-il pas plutot la transposition d'une opposition à la messianisation, ou «christianisation» du Seigneur Jésus, Fils de Dieu, au sein du mouvment qui plus tard, à Antioche, prendra le nom de christianisme?

(my bold)
My translation:

Is there some irony in the fact that the Jews reject the Jesus so-called messiah and claim Jesus Barabbas, i.e. Jesus Son of the Father, whom the Sanhedrin has just condemned as a blasphemer? Would not the narrative rather be the transposition of an opposition to the messianization, or "Christianization" of the Lord Jesus, Son of God, in the movement that later on in Antioch will take the name of Christianity?

So we obtain: the crowd allegorizes an opposition to the identification of the victim to be killed with the Jewish Messiah. But the crowd is already per se a negative allegory invented by the gentilizers against the Judaizers. Hence, now, by introducing Barabbas as parody against Marcion, the Judaizers are making clumsily the crowd a negative allegory of the marcionites, but this latter operation is rather clumsy, since the Marcionites were not Jews in the real world.

Given the fact that the crowd allegorizes negatively the Judaizers in the original narrative (before the interpolation of Barabbas), what really does the crowd allegorize after the interpolation of Barabbas?

The crowd allegorizes merely the "Jews" of the previous narrative. Hence now these same "Jews", who in the original narrative wanted the death of the "Son of Father" (=a deity), after the interpolation of Barabbas they want the death of the "Jesus called Christ" (=a mortal Jewish Messiah).

So prof Price has seen very acutely that in the original narrative the crowd wants to claim for itself the choice of who has to die (not of who has to live). But not being there Barabbas in the original narrative, against whom the crowd wanted to claim the his own power to put to death the Son of Father?

Of course, against the only person who could prevent the crowd from the murder: Pilate.

And we know that in GPeter, Pilate appears but he is reluctant to kill Jesus "the Son of God". He shows the his reluctance even without appealing to Barabbas as extrema ratio to save Jesus.

Therefore the conclusion is:
  • Pilate appeas in the original narrative
  • the Jews want to kill Jesus the Son of God (=a deity, not the Jewish Messiah)
  • Pilate is reluctant but he can't prevent them
  • "Barabbas", docent Couchoud and Stahl, is a Judaizing parody of the Jesus Son of God who is the only victim in the original gospel
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13658
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: In the original narrative, Pilate wanted to save the Son of Father ("Bar-Abbas")

Post by Giuseppe »

If "Jesus the Son of Father" (of which the Judaizing sarcastic parody is the invented ad hoc "Jesus Bar-Abbas") is the original hero, as Jesus the Son of God, of proto-Mark (a docetic Gospel), then, along the christianization/Judaization of this Gospel anti-YHWH figure, in parallel with the removal of the original docetism by replacing it with the Judaizing separationism, any occurrence of the expression:

Jesus the Son of God

...was replaced by the Separationistic expression :

Jesus the Son of man.

Hence in proto-Mark the docetic Christ predicts the death and resurrection of the Son of God, not of the Son of Man.

The Barabbas episode serves definitely to make it clear that the victim on the cross was NOT, ABSOLUTELY NOT, the Son of God, but the Son of man.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13658
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: In the original narrative, Pilate wanted to save the Son of Father ("Bar-Abbas")

Post by Giuseppe »

Important corollary of the fact that the expression "Son of man" replaced any original occurrence of "Son of God" to introduce the separationism in the place of the original docetism:

There was never a such thing as a Cerinthian sect. There was never a separationist who hated YHWH. All the separationists adored the creator as supreme god. Irenaeus invented a Cerinthus who was both separationist and anti-YHWH only to show even more negatively the last separationists who read Mark.

The separationism is pure Judaizing reaction against anti-nomian docetism.

The ebionites were separationists.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
User avatar
billd89
Posts: 1339
Joined: Thu Jun 25, 2020 6:27 pm
Location: New England, USA

Re: Betyl Worship

Post by billd89 »

Charles Wilson
Posts: 2093
Joined: Thu Apr 03, 2014 8:13 am

Re: In the original narrative, Pilate wanted to save the Son of Father ("Bar-Abbas")

Post by Charles Wilson »

Giuseppe --

I've Posted before on my beliefs that the story of Barabbas is a rewrite of Josephus, Antiquities..., 18, 2, 4.
Notice, for your Thesis, that "Pilate" brackets this section.

In section 2, the ever important Coponius leads (I am very serious on this one) but look at the end of the Section:
"When Gratus had done those things, he went back to Rome, after he had tarried in Judea eleven years, when Pontius Pilate came as his successor..."

Then comes the important Section 4, which contains the original idea for the "Release of Barabbas".

Then, Chapter 3, Section 1:
"BUT now Pilate, the procurator of Judea, removed the army from Cesarea to Jerusalem, to take their winter quarters there, in order to abolish the Jewish laws..."

Hope this helps.

CW
Giuseppe
Posts: 13658
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: In the original narrative, Pilate wanted to save the Son of Father ("Bar-Abbas")

Post by Giuseppe »

I think now that the origin of the strange reaction of Pilate in the Earliest Gospel (as reconstructed by Jean Magne):

So they bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to Pilate.

“Are you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate.

“You have said so,” Jesus replied.

He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.

.. is mere anti-Vespasian propaganda.

Hence, the Gnostic interpretation of the same Pilate's reaction comes later than it.

Which doesn't change my basic agreement with Couchoud/Stahl about the Barabbas episode as caustic parody of the resistance (by anti-demiurgists) to "christianization" of Jesus.
Post Reply